Libertarian Principle: People should be free to do whatever they want, except to initiate force, the threat of force, or fraud against other people or their property.

Laws & regulations should be tested against theLibertarian Principle: If a law has another purpose, like banning hemp so that big oil companies needn't compete with (CO2-neutral) hemp Diesel oil, I would not enforce the law.

Prosecution

A prosecutor's first task is to NOT prosecute the innocent.

As a Libertarian, my priorities would be to prosecute crimes where force, a threat of force, or fraud were used against persons or property. That would include such crimes by government officials.

I would not enforce a law that violates the Libertarian Principle.

I would not enforce a law that violates the US Constitution.

I would prosecute corrupt officials.

My loyalty would be to the voters & people of NY.

I have no debts nor loyalty to the party bosses who run the Republican and Democrat parties in NY.

Vote Chris Garvey, Libertarian for Attorney General of NY State

"The intellect and wit of Ben Franklin; and the fortitudinous conviction for liberty that rivals that of Patrick Henry." - Shawna Cole

I simply remember my favorite things,and then I don't need:Zoloft, or Paxil, or Sarafem, or Lexapro;Almost as helpful as is a placebo,Celexa, Selective Serotonin Inhibitors,that were the most common causal contributors,

His thugs didn’t bother with an honest job.Instead, they had chosen, to steal and to rob.

But armed New Yorkers were a bitter pill:Sullivan’s muggers getting shot and killed.To keep his robbers from being harmed,He passed a law to get his victims disarmed.

So now you need a permit, to carry a gun.And in most places, they won’t give you one.A shameful legacy of bad old Big-Tim’s:Protecting robbers, from New York’s victims.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

Why? has a citizen, need of a gun?Cause guns save lives, they're not just for fun.Tyrants have murdered their disarmed civilians,Last century: A-hundred-eighty-millions.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

Somebody’s poisoning most of the nation,With drinking water Fluoridation.**Reckless poison of our brains is a fault,Garvey would charge as 3rd degree Assault.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

Nine-eleven when the towers fell,Soon thereafter, went our rights - as well.Stuff- not right- in the explanation.That's why Garvey wantsinvestigation.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

If you're a-hurtin' and have need of drugs,You're afoul of drug enforcement thugs,Rules a-plenty must you heed and a-listen,Still your doctor might wind-up in a prison.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

Governments love eminent domain.They take your land, which you worked hard to gain.That's just something Garvey can't abide,In such fights, he'll be upon your side.

Chorus:Vote in 'eighteen, for Christopher Garvey.Won't rest until - - New Yorkers are free.Make our freedom more than just ephemeral.Vote Libertarian Attorney General.

Lyrics Copyright 2018 Chris Garvey permission to repost granted

1defenestration - Throwing opponents out the windows of the Democratic Club, after beating-them-up.

**.... According to scientific publications in Europe and the United States, it appears that fluoride can cause – in addition to stomach troubles – Down’s syndrome, Alzheimer’s, birth defects, cancers, recurrent rashes, mouth ulcers, headaches and osteoporosis. It presents serious risks for diabetics and may be fatal for people suffering from kidney disjunction. ... it doesn’t really give protection against cavities.

53 studies have found that elevated fluoride exposure is associated with reduced IQ in humans, while 45 animal studies have found that fluoride exposure impairs the learning and/or memory capacity of animals.

Water Fluoridation

There is ample evidence that Water Fluoridation causes brain injury and tumors.

As Attorney General, I would first warn, then prosecute water companies that add Fluoride to the drinking water supply.

NY Penal Law S 120.00 Assault in the third degree.A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when:1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person, he causessuch injury to such person or to a third person; or2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person; or3. With criminal negligence, he causes physical injury to anotherperson by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.Assault in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.

Aq "Good Second Amendment candidate whose rating is based solely on the

candidate's responses to the Candidate Questionnaire and who does not have

a record on Second Amendment issues."

The League of Women Voters of New York State

will share your answers on our nonpartisan voter guide September 20th for the Nov. 6, 2018 general election.

Responses are limited to 1000 characters.

1. What would be your top three priorities if elected?

1. To Uphold:

the Bill of Rights, and

the Libertarian Principle: People should be free to do as they wish, except to initiate force or fraud against others or their property.

2. To Prosecute corrupt Public Officials.

3. To Overturn bad laws in Court.

2. Do you envision a more robust role for the Attorney General's office in investigating and prosecuting public corruption?

Yes.

Please explain your answer.

NY State steals more money from its people (primarily by taxation) than any other thieving entity in NY.

I shall investigate & prosecute public officials (elected & otherwise) who divert this money to themselves or to their friends.

My loyalty is to the people - - not to high officials of established political parties.

NY's over-regulation of its people costs the people jobs, time, and money. I would scrutinize bad regulations & laws for unconstitutional flaws, and work to invalidate such laws. Victims have helped me identify such bad regulations & laws. My election would encourage more victims of bad laws to tell me about such regulations & laws. I will publicly encourage them.

3. What do you see as the biggest threats to New Yorkers' voting rights and what role can the Attorney General play in protecting voting rights?

I have heard first-hand accounts from poll workers. Party officials monitor the rolls to see who has not voted. About 1/2 hour before the polls close, cars & buses with out-of-state plates arrive in the parking lot and hordes of unidentified people arrive saying only the name which they purport to vote as. The signatures don't match, but the poll workers have been told they have no authority to ask for identification.

I've read of 200 dead voters voting in a Nassau election. I’ve read of similar elections.

Such frauds dilute the rights of actual voters.

Conversely, a voter told me he was prevented from voting, even though he had his Board of Elections postcard, because someone else had already used his name to vote.

I would agitate for a Voter ID law.

I would use my investigatory power to prosecute and deter such fraud.

4. How do you plan to use the authority of the office to ensure law enforcement transparency and accountability throughout NYS _ from police to prosecutors to corrections officials?

A massive job. A prosecutor’s first duty is to NOT PROSECUTE THE INNOCENT. That I regard this duty as important should have a deterrent effect on misconduct.

Delaying production of exculpatory evidence results in poor people being jailed while their lawyers await production of evidence. Jail pressures the innocent to plead guilty. The AG can change this.

Would prosecute violations of the Public Meetings Laws. Legislation is often agreed upon in secret local meetings of legislators, then slammed rapidly through the public local legislative sessions without sufficient prior public notice nor explanation of the cryptic bill numbers.

If local civic activists and minority legislators know they can get help from the Attorney General, we can stop such railroading-through of laws and spending.

Dated 5/9/2018

Press Release

From the Libertarian Party of New York

With Schneiderman out, who is left in the NYS AG race?

Will Libertarian Chris Garvey be the next NYS Attorney General?

With the sudden, dramatic implosion of Eric Schneiderman’s career and reelection hopes, the question emerges: Who will be the next New York State Attorney General? A race that could be safely ignored and an outcome that could be taken for granted is now high drama.

All of the good candidates are already lined up for other races. The Democrats will have to scrounge up some unknown leftover who wasn’t considered good enough to run for State Assembly or State Senate to run for State AG.

It is during times like these and elections like this that a third party candidate can emerge and WIN. It has happened before in New York. Will Chris Garvey, Libertarian party candidate for NYS AG, follow in the footsteps of James L. Buckley and win a close, three-way, statewide race?

Will Democrat voters unquestioningly support an unknown, second-string party insider or will they scrutinize the positions and ideologies of all three candidates and select one of their own, independent choosing?

Libertarians and Democrats share many positions on social issues. A well-known LBT with long-held positions may attract more voters than a Democrat “career changer” who may alter his positions to suit his new job description, much like Kirsten Gillibrand flipping on gun rights after she got a new job and moved downstate.

I guess I'll have to change my plans.

I won't be running against the Schneider man.

When they exposed his mean hypocrisy,

Then from his office, he did quickly flee.

But please don't lose a wink of sleep.

6.5 Million$ of campaign funds he can keep.

Spending the tax-payers' money, on politics games.

Got him a not-small fortune,

To keep in his name.

We'll miss him not, this time around.

Lucky New York: he's, stepped down.

Copyright 2018 Chris Garvey.

Marijuana or Hemp

Cuomo's phony "legalization" is a crony scheme to delay deregulation.

No Prosecutions

As Attorney General, I would not prosecute Marijuana "offenses".I don't want to tax it or regulate it, but those are preferable alternatives to the present bans.

The Libertarian Candidate for Governor Larry Sharpe says: "Regulate it like onions."

I agree. Onions are unregulated.

Cuomo's phony "legalization" is a crony scheme to delay deregulation, to raise prices, and to enrich only his "friends", who's "licenses" will be related to campaign contributions.

Cuomo is dragging his feet on making Medical Marijuana available.

His "studying" and regulation schemes are delaying treatments and unnecessarily raising costs.

Marijuana and Hemp prohibition was instigated by crony capitalists [also known as mercantilists or fascists] who don't want to compete with hemp products. These Hemp opponents, whose products would need to compete with hemp include or included:

Oil Industry - Rockefellers;

DuPont: oil, plastics, paper pulping, nylon, dacron;

Hearst - Wood Pulp Paper;

cotton industry;

providers of insecticides & fertilizers for cotton;

alcohol industry;

drug industry

1937: The year the federal government outlawed Hemp or cannabis:

DuPont patents petrochemical manufacturing processes for making plastics, as well as pollution-heavy sulfate/sulfite processes for producing wood pulp. For the next 50 years, these processes are responsible for 80% of DuPont's industrial output.

In its 1937 Annual Report, DuPont informs stockholders that the company anticipates radical changes from the revenue raising power of government... converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization.

anti-depressant,without the side effect of murder & suicide associated with SSRI anti-depressants,

treating glaucoma,

and

as a neuroprotectant after stroke or trauma:

United States Patent 6,630,507 Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectantsHampson, et al. October 7, 2003claims benefit of No. 60/082,589 filed Apr. 21, 1998Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services (Washington, DC)

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION ...It has surprisingly been found that cannabidiol and other cannabinoids can function as neuroprotectants, even though they lack NMDA receptor antagonist activity."------------------In other words, everybody already knew marijuana protects the brain from trauma, but in 1998 the inventors discovered that Cannabidiol, without the stuff that gets you high, also protects your brain.

I suppose that as long as you take natural marijuana to protect against brain injury or stroke, you won't infringe the patent.------To read the full patent:

"Abstract: Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of ...

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia."

Some of the new Synthetics may be dangerous, but who would choose them if real Marijuana were legal to grow, import, or buy? A free market, with trademarks indicating the source of goods, is the best answer to bad products.

My 1775 replica haversack is made of hemp canvas. So are the pockets of my 1780 replica regimental coat. And I also use hemp twine.Hempstead = a stand of hemp. See also New Hampshire.

The live bodies of humans and other animals are where most opiates are produced.

Endogenous opioids = Opioid-peptides that are produced in the body, which include:

Endorphins

Enkephalins

Dynorphins

Endomorphins

Although pain is important for sensing injury and avoiding further injury, you don’t need to be distracted by it for the entire healing duration.So your body makes Endogenous opioids as natural pain suppressors, that make less noticeable many of the day’s routine discomforts.If you bash your thumb with a hammer, and your body's opioid production is good, you can feel the opioid warmth ofpainkiller infusing your entire arm. Enough pain might also make you drunk, as the endogenous opioids spread to other nerves and brain cells, causing slurred speech. The pain has done its job of discouraging another hit with the hammer. But you don’t need to be distracted by pain for the entire healing duration.

Alcohol irritates your nerves, and thereby triggers your opioid production. There is no shortage of endogenous opioids, so there are no physical withdrawal pains.*

When a person takes outside opioids (opiates, drugs derived from opium, morphine and semi-synthetic and synthetic drugs such as hydrocodone, oxycodone and fentanyl), his body senses that he has more opioids than needed for normal pain suppression.

Endogenous opioid production is reduced to compensate for the opiates taken, reducing the opiate effect of the outside drug and its high. Hence the increasing dependence on taking opiates.When the outside opiate supply is interrupted, the body takes 24 to 48 hours to ramp up endogenous opioid production to normal levels. Pain becomes more noticeable. “The withdrawal symptoms for opiates may include severe dysphoria, craving for another opiate dose, irritability, sweating, nausea, rhinorrhea, tremor, vomiting, and myalgia.” Wikipedia

So it's stupid to become an opium addict. By reducing the opiates that your body makes, you become dependent on criminal suppliers. You can't trust criminals to supply reliable consistent dosages of what they say they are selling you. Accidental overdose and death become common when opiates are illegal.

If opiates were legal, you could buy them in drug stores.

Dosages and substances would be as labeled. It would be easier to avoid accidental overdose, or deliberate poisoning by criminal suppliers. Prior to opium bans, which were racist laws designed to make America less comfortable for Chinese imigrants, women took the opiate Laudanum, sold cheaply in drug stores, for monthly discomforts. Few became addicted. The assured inexpensive supply from reliable sources made addiction less of a problem.

Copr. 2016 Chris Garvey - permission to repost granted.

*A hangover results from different mechanisms than opiate dependence and withdrawal pains.

If your drunken binge is long enough to suppress dream sleep, you will eventually dream while awake - - the D.T.s.

The so-called "opiate epidemic" is a result of opiate prohibition.

As Attorney General, I would not prosecute possessors of truthfully labeled opiates.

I would prosecute accidental or deliberate murder, and

prosecute dealers engaged in violent turf wars.

Tobacco

It's a good idea to quit. But if you can't...

E Cigarettes are Cheaper, & Easier to smoke. Nicotine without complicated toxic smoke byproducts. Can't set your bed on fire. You can take briefer doses. It's easier to quit. No second-hand smoke.

Unless THEY are determined to murder smokers, why would THEY want to ban vaping?

Crack & most American cigarettes are freebased with Nitrogen to make them more psycho-active & addictive.

So if you slip and smoke a Nat Sherman, it won't intensify the nicotine addiction as much as most American cigarettes do.A friend of mine switched to Nat Sherman and then tapered off to 0 cigarettes/day. There was no physical craving when he skipped a cigarette.

The federal fiscal year for 1999 started in October 1998, the month that AIMCO reported closing its purchase of Insignia and HUD engineered Ginnie Mae contracts to John Ervin, providing $800,000 in contract payments to Ervin over the next two years.

HUD failed to produce audited financial statements that year. Its opening balance from fiscal 1998 required undocumentable adjustments of $17 billion. To force the books to balance in 1999 required $59 billion in undocumentable adjustments. 14For its audit in 2000, Cuomo’s last year in office, HUD declined to make public the amount of undocumentable adjustments required to balance the books.15

And the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which under Andrew Cuomo couldn't account for $59 billion in its fiscal 1999 audit, again has changed course on its accounting system (see "Why Is $59 Billion Missing from HUD?" Nov. 6, 2000, and "Inside HUD's Financial Fiasco," June 25, 2001). Rather than scrap the notoriously flawed HUD Central Account and Program System (HUDCAPS), the department now has decided to keep it until a review can be completed.https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pakhtu/conversations/topics/14142citing Insight Magazine - In May 2008 Insight ceased publicationTracking the Money Recent articles on Federal Finance by Kelly PatriciaO'Meara

But Andrew Cuomo opposed rent subsidies: Inspector General audit chief Chris Greer was in a meeting with Cuomo and HUD IG Susan Gaffney. Cuomo told them that he was planning to get rid of Fitts and Hamilton Securities. Greer recalled, “It had to do with some audits we were doing. There were proposals that would affect a bunch of folks in New York that had a lot of money and who could help Cuomo. One proposal was called ‘mark to market’ and had to do with the Section 8 [rental subsidies] program. I was managing all the multi-family programs at the time. Cuomo wanted to do away with what we tried to put in place, the ‘mark to market’ program. It would have killed a HUD tax-avoidance program….

Greer pointed out, “If there had been ‘mark to market,’ it would treat the HUD Section 8 program like private mortgages in private industry and market them at their true values. You wouldn’t have inflated subsidies, and you would have had more subsidies to give more people. Or you would save tremendous amounts of money that could be used for other purposes. Billions of dollars. Hamilton was a driver on that along with a couple of other folks in HUD. But Cuomo didn’t do it. Money was wasted on these mortgages, the money that went into the fat cats’ pockets.”

He added, “Cuomo clearly had no use for Austin Fitts. The fights with Fitts were political. Everything Cuomo did was political; he was a totally political animal. He ran the CDP [Community Development Program] block grant in HUD for a long time and fixed the system so awards would be made to places he wanted them made to for political reasons, primarily in New York, because he had his eyes on going back and running for governor.”http://www.dunwalke.com/sidebars/andrew_cuomo.htm------------------Note:HUD victim & Whistleblower

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/092106_about_cuomo.shtml

--------

Cuomo v. Catherine Austin FittsCatherin Austin Fitts noticed that HUD mortgage foreclosure auctions were only recovering 5% of the mortgage value. Probably 'cause the only entity aware of the auction was usually a dummy affiliate of the defaulting mortgagor. So Fitts posted the auctions on the web, so anyone could see them and bid. Recovery Rates soared to 95%. But without the massive spread to profit on, where are the "Fees for our Friends"? How could Cuomo's cronies make enough to afWord massive Cuomo Campaign donations? So Cuomo initiated a baseless Criminal Investigation of Fitts, to render her ineffective. As the Clinton Administration ended, Cuomo quietly closed the empty investigation of Fitts.

[For many years, Catherine Austin Fitts has written and spoken profusely about her experiences as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Perhaps the greatest lesson she learned there is that HUD was being run as a criminal enterprise, most likely financing a black budget and targeting American neighborhoods with narcotics trafficking and mortgage fraud. In this article, she discloses extremely disturbing facts about former HUD Secretary, Andrew Cuomo—how he came to power and the ways in which he and his associates may have benefited from 9/11. Even more disturbing is the fact that Cuomo is currently running for Attorney General of the State of New York, and doing so without investigation into the facts that this article discloses.

The mortgage insurance, securities and financial transactions at HUD ran through the big Wall Street firms and big banks who would have benefited from the housing and mortgage bubbles and other policies instituted or supported by Cuomo. These large financial institutions benefited as a result of the looser monetary policies and increased government spending that flowed out of 9/11. The New York Attorney General’s Office clearly plays a powerful oversight role with respect to many of these institutions.

One of the disturbing aspects of 9/11 was the insurance legislation pushed through shortly afterwards, reportedly with the help of leadership by former AIG head Maurice Greenberg. Lucy Komisar has reported on Cuomo's father's support of Greenberg and asked the important question as to how Cuomo's office would handle Greenberg who was investigated by the current Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer. From the Wilderness has written about AIG's involvement in Arkansas and the Coral Insurance deal with the state agency that handled all the HUD programs. This is only one example of the web of players and questions around Cuomo.

Another concern for Catherine Austin Fitts is the physical harassment that she experienced starting in 1997 while being overtly targeted by Andrew Cuomo with the help of the legal department that he managed as HUD Secretary. While she does not know who authorized, financed or did it, she can verify that these are the tactics that will be effective in slowing the truth of 9/11 from coming out. When she spoke at the National Press Club to launch the UnAnswered Questions website, her body was covered with spreading brown spots which her doctor now states, based on recent testing and the symptoms, was arsenic poisoning. She thought she was going to die but went ahead with the speech anyway and then spent days in bed recovering. Although it was not her best speech, lucky for all of us, Mike Ruppert came in by conference call and it was one of his best speeches.—CB]

In 2000, three and a half years after Andrew Cuomo became Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), I met with a senior staff assistant to the Chairman of one of the appropriations committees for HUD. When I asked what was going on at HUD, the staff assistant said, "HUD is being run as a criminal enterprise." I replied, “I don’t disagree.”

Cuomo’s reign at HUD was not the first time that HUD had been run by a New Yorker with ambitions for higher office. From 1989-1990, I served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration and watched Jack Kemp, a former Congressman from Buffalo, try to balance the politics of getting ahead with the needs of citizens and communities at a federal agency in which special interests had traditionally had the upper hand.

At the beginning of the Clinton Administration in 1993, Kemp was replaced by former San Antonio mayor, Henry Cisneros, who recruited a new team of HUD political appointees, including Andrew Cuomo as Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development.

After leaving HUD in 1990, I had started an investment bank and financial software developer, The Hamilton Securities Group. In September 1993, under Cisneros, Hamilton was hired by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the mortgage insurance arm of HUD, in a competitive bid process to serve as lead financial advisor. Hamilton’s responsibilities included designing and implementing a $10 billion loan sale program between 1994 and 1997 and providing portfolio strategy support for what was then a $400 billion portfolio of mortgage insurance-in-force, mortgages and real estate.1

A few weeks after Clinton’s re-election in November 1996, Cisneros resigned to manage the results of a Department of Justice investigation into his disclosure regarding payments to his former mistress. He was replaced by Andrew Cuomo after an unexpected federal investigation regarding HUD grants removed the Mayor of Seattle from consideration.2 In one short period, the Department of Justice knocked out the Secretary and the leading contender for Secretary, paving the way for Andrew Cuomo.

The following year, Cuomo fired Hamilton in a highly political manner, canceling the loan sales program on the false pretext that HUD could not do loan sales without Hamilton. Creating political air cover for Cuomo’s cancellation were allegations filed by a litigious HUD contractor who was subsequently showered with a generous contract and settlement by HUD under Cuomo. The contractor’s allegations were the basis of a combined HUD Inspector General and Department of Justice investigation which, like the investigation of the Mayor of Seattle, came up empty.

One of the chief beneficiaries of Cuomo’s ascendancy to Secretary and the subsequent cancellation of the loan sales were the developers, owners and managers of apartment buildings that were subsidized by HUD and often financed through FHA and Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is the HUD unit which guarantees securities issued to finance pools of mortgages insured by FHA. Many of these apartment buildings had been originally financed through tax shelter syndications.

The largest HUD subsidized portfolio at the time was the one owned by Insignia, chaired by Andrew Farkas. On September 5, 2006, as Andrew Cuomo was running for the democratic nomination for Attorney General of New York, Wayne Barrett published “Andrew Cuomo’s $2 Million Man” in the Village Voice.3 Barrett reported that Cuomo’s compensation from Farkas’s company, Island Capital, in 2004 and 2005 totaled $1.2 million and that Farkas family members and business associates had donated $800,000 to Cuomo’s campaigns since he left HUD. Barrett describes Cuomo’s role as Secretary of HUD in approving an-out-of-court settlement with Insignia (regarding litigation alleging a HUD subsidy being improperly used to pay kickbacks) shortly before Insignia’s sale to AIMCO (Apartment Investment And Managing Company) in 1998.

With Insignia valuations reflecting the benefits of its settlement of the kickback litigation, the cancellation of the HUD loan sales and related policies increasing the private value of HUD subsidized portfolios, Farkas sold out to AIMCO in 1998 for $910 million4, described by his attorney as a “fantastic price.5”

A question that remains unanswered is whether the price of the Insignia sale to AIMCO in 1998 was simply fantastic or whether --given the pattern of events around it – it was inflated with government resources and decisions arranged in a criminal manner.

This question raises a second question -- whether the $2 million that Farkas and his network have paid to Cuomo and his campaigns since then represent a kickback from the Insignia sale to AIMCO and whether Cuomo’s compensation is simply fantastic or something more.

Andrew Farkas & HUD Landlords

In 1995, HUD officials asked Hamilton to help them define their options related to their portfolio of subsidized apartment buildings. HUD had provided significant amounts of “project-based” subsidies to fund these apartment buildings. A project-based subsidy is one that funds and is attached to a building as opposed to tenant-based vouchers that fund payment of rents by a tenant. Essentially, a project-based subsidy goes to the building owner and manager. A tenant-based voucher can move with the tenant from building to building. Many of the apartment buildings supported by expiring HUD project-based subsidies had been financed with mortgages insured by FHA and enjoyed the financial benefits of a variety of federal tax benefits.

There were a significant number of apartment buildings in the HUD subsidized portfolio that had project-based subsidy contracts expiring during the second half of the 1990’s. Federal decisions as to whether to renew expensive project-based subsidy contracts or instead offer more cost effective tenant vouchers, whether to refinance existing mortgages or auction them if they defaulted and whether or not some partnerships would be subject to recapture of prior tax benefits would have a dramatic impact on the profitability of companies like Insignia. Data supplied by HUD to Hamilton at the time showed that the tenant population in question was primarily women and children with high percentages of elderly and minority. A significant number were drawing on welfare, health care and other federal payments.

As the debate and the budgetary implications of the expiring contracts on HUD- subsidized apartment buildings developed, I received an unexpected call at Hamilton from Andrew Farkas. He explained that it was essential that all subsidies go to the owners of the properties in the form of “project-based” assistance. He said that if the subsidy were used to fund tenant vouchers that the tenants would simply use the voucher to buy drugs (the mechanics of exactly how this would transpire were unclear) and then their children would go homeless. I was so taken aback by his tone that I suggested to him that portraying his tenants as people who were not worthy of government funding might not be the best way to argue his case for project-based subsidy. He seemed quite displeased with my suggestion.

If Farkas was not happy with Hamilton’s advice as lead financial advisor, he was not the only one. It was our job to regularly estimate or quantify the impact of HUD’s decisions on the federal budget and on communities. Our work was identifying the price that HUD was paying to fund projects in ways that served special interests rather than satisfied objective criteria of financial performance regarding government investment and the health of our housing infrastructure and communities. This financial transparency was causing some government leaders to reconsider their options, while others remained committed to politics as usual.

After Insignia, NHP (a non-profit organization providing quality affordable multi-family housing for low and moderate-income families) was the second-largest HUD subsidized owner and manager until it was also purchased by AIMCO. At a dinner of the National Multi-Housing Council in early 1996, NHP’s chairman was clear with me. Renewal of expiring long-term HUD subsidy contracts were important to NHP’s profits. The federal government was morally obligated to subsidize him and other HUD landlords, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or performance for communities relative to more economically sound options. Performance was irrelevant compared to the long-term profits “promised” to HUD insiders. He would not say exactly who had made these “promises.”

In 1996, I took the pricings on the HUD defaulted mortgage portfolio to staff of HUD’s Hope VI public housing construction program. I explained that HUD had substantial single-family inventory in those same communities. Empty single-family homes could be bought and repaired at a fraction of the price of new construction of public housing by private developer. The HUD official said, "but then how would we generate fees for our friends?"

Our estimates at that time indicated that the federal government was spending $55,000 a year for a woman and 1.8 children (on average) to live in HUD-subsidized private housing with welfare and food stamps in high-cost areas in a manner such that they would, and indeed could, never become taxpayers and get off the dole. Our analysis showed that the federal government was spending more per person to fund the HUD-housed poor than the annual average income of the American taxpayer who was being asked to fund the rising cost of the debt issued to pay for this.

HUD was spending $150-250,000 per unit to build Hope VI public housing while HUD-foreclosed homes that could be bought and fixed up for $50,000 were available a block away. We were paying large corporations $35-150 dollars an hour to do things that people who lived in those neighborhoods – given advances in information and telecommunications technology -- could be trained to do. The implications were enormous: theoretically, at least, there was the opportunity, using more accurate place-based information, to place public finances on a sounder footing in which the tax payers' investment returns were positive. The potential savings across the federal budget were in the billions.

As the economics of various choices became clearer, tension emerged between HUD landlords and special interests looking for a new and richer round of “fees for our friends” and a new generation of reformers who saw an opportunity to reinvigorate America’s workforce and communities in the face of globalization and the movement of jobs and pension fund capital to countries with younger, more productive populations.

The HUD landlords were best described by a statement made to me by Dick Ravitch, chairman of the AFL-CIO housing trust and a HUD developer from New York, over dinner at the Jockey Club: "As long as I can get government subsidies, what do I care if people have education or jobs?" Traditional interests were committed to using government subsidies and financing to ignore fundamental issues of productivity. While this would enrich private interests, it would accelerate the issuance of increasing amounts of federal mortgage and Treasury debt, weakening the federal credit and committing future generations to an impossible debt burden.

The reformers were exemplified by the HUD loan sales team who had succeeded in more than doubling the recovery rates on defaulted HUD loans from 35% to 70-90%, generating $2.2 billion of funding for HUD and deficit reduction. Later audits would indicate that these methods were better for communities than HUD’s traditional methods. However, these higher recoveries were coming out of the profits of companies like NHP and Insignia at a time when investors were making windfall profits on privatizations globally. Lower profits on HUD-related properties then multiplied through to a lower value of their stock.

I was pretty sure where Andrew Cuomo stood in all of this. As reported by Lucy Komisar in “Fees for Our Friends”, available on her website, “The Komisar Scoop:6”

Inspector General audit chief Chris Greer was in a meeting with Cuomo and HUD IG (Inspector General) Susan Gaffney. Cuomo told them that he was planning to get rid of Fitts and Hamilton Securities. Greer recalled, “It had to do with some audits we were doing. There were proposals that would affect a bunch of folks in New York that had a lot of money and who could help Cuomo. One proposal was called ‘mark to market’ and had to do with the Section 8 [rental subsidies] program. I was managing all the multi-family programs at the time. Cuomo wanted to do away with what we tried to put in place, the ‘mark to market’ program. It would have killed a HUD tax-avoidance program….

Greer pointed out, “If there had been ‘mark to market,’ it would treat the HUD Section 8 program like private mortgages in private industry and market them at their true values. You wouldn’t have inflated subsidies, and you would have had more subsidies to give more people. Or you would save tremendous amounts of money that could be used for other purposes. Billions of dollars. Hamilton was a driver on that along with a couple of other folks in HUD. But Cuomo didn’t do it. Money was wasted on these mortgages, the money that went into the fat cats’ pockets.”

He added, “Cuomo clearly had no use for Austin Fitts. The fights with Fitts were political. Everything Cuomo did was political; he was a totally political animal. He ran the CDP [Community Development Program] block grant in HUD for a long time and fixed the system so awards would be made to places he wanted them made to for political reasons, primarily in New York, because he had his eyes on going back and running for governor.”

Sometime after being told by Greer that Cuomo, still Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development, had indicated that he was planning on getting rid of me and Hamilton, I learned that Cuomo had referred a complaint on the loan sales to the HUD Inspector General. The subsequent investigation was short and found nothing. That’s when John Ervin started to make noise.

John Ervin Targets HUD Loan Sales

John Ervin was the founder of Ervin & Associates, a HUD contractor that was servicing defaulted HUD multifamily mortgages. Ervin’s business was shrinking as the loan sale program sold off the mortgages and HUD no longer needed a contractor to service them. Hired while Kemp was Secretary, Ervin’s relationship with HUD deteriorated during Cisneros’s time until HUD fired Ervin for default related to contract performance.

In mid-1996 Ervin filed two lawsuits, one against HUD and the other, a qui tam lawsuit7 filed under seal, against Hamilton and several successful loan sale bidders. Both lawsuits alleged corruption in the loan sale program and were accompanied by extensive lobbying of Congress and the Washington press by Ervin. The qui tam investigation was delegated by the Department of Justice to the HUD Inspector General Susan Gaffney, continuing until 2001.8

I had been informed by the head of FHA in early 1996 that he ignored a White House request that he not award a new contract to Hamilton. At the time of Ervin’s secret filing against Hamilton in mid-1996, Scott Nordheimer, a multifamily developer active in both assisted housing and Hope VI housing, had informed me at a housing industry dinner that I would be the target of a frame, saying, “Well, we tried to have you fired through the White House but that did not work, so now the big boys have gotten together and [decided] you are going to prison.” Nordheimer was a convicted felon whose associated success in winning HUD development grants during Cuomo’s period at HUD became controversial as tenants with felony records were being evicted from HUD-funded developments.9

In October,1997, with Ervin’s and Gaffney’s efforts creating an environment supportive of “reforming” Cisneros’s financial reforms, Cuomo fired Hamilton for the convenience of the government, using as a pretext a mistake that a subcontractor had made (and which had been reported voluntarily to HUD almost a year before) on two highly profitable and successful loan sales, and withheld payment of $2.2 million owned to Hamilton.

The litigation between Ervin, Hamilton and HUD was finally settled in 2006 after Hamilton’s insistence on trials resulted in Ervin and HUD ending up empty-handed with nothing to show for a decade-long fishing expedition other than the mistake Hamilton had voluntarily reported long before we were fired and which had no cash impact on HUD. Meanwhile, Hamilton had produced evidence indicating foul play by HUD, including an affidavit of a HUD Inspector General auditor who had been pressured to falsify her results and left the agency when she would not.10

So where would Ervin get the money to finance such an operation? In 1997, one reporter who interviewed Ervin at his office reported to me that he had a staff of 17 people working full-time on the litigation and related campaigning. While all the sources of Ervin’s financing remains an unanswered question, we do know that HUD/Ginnie Mae under Cuomo awarded Ervin contracts in 1998 while Ervin was suing HUD.11 As a former Assistant Secretary, I can affirm how unusual it is to give contracts to a contractor who was fired for default, has no special skills and is suing the agency. We also know that HUD agreed to a $2MM settlement with Ervin in 2000 at the end of Cuomo’s tenure at HUD after Ervin’s allegations had been proved false and our attorney was adamant that there was no need for HUD to pay Ervin anything, let alone millions. As Cuomo exited HUD to run unsuccessfully for Governor of New York, I was left to deal with a well-financed Ervin for another five years.

Disappearing Pricing Data

In 1994, Hamilton was retained by NHP to value its multifamily portfolio and related property management business in anticipation of NHP’s selling stock to the public. In the process, Hamilton created a detailed simulation of NHP’s apartment buildings and related tax shelter partnerships and mortgage financings that gave us insight into the impact of various federal policies on the financial value of privately owned HUD- subsidized multifamily portfolios.

The following year, with significant data provided by HUD, we reviewed the impact of various federal policies on the entire HUD-subsidized portfolio. Then, in 1996, we developed, priced and helped HUD sell several portfolios of mortgages collateralized by partially and fully-subsidized HUD apartment buildings. Using this data and extensive publicly available databases, we built a suite of software tools that illuminated the value of HUD portfolios as well as the flows of government investment in places and the land, real estate and other assets it impacted.

Using Hamilton’s pricing infrastructure, it would have been possible in early 1998 to quickly value how much of Insignia’s $910 million sale to AIMCO, agreed to on March 17, 1998, reflected increases in values resulting from Cuomo’s decisions to cancel the loan sales, settle Insignia’s litigation and change expiring contract policies to favor owners. Except for one problem. At the time of our firing by Cuomo in late 1997, HUD’s contracting office had required that HUD data, including publicly available data, be scrubbed from Hamilton’s computers. Then Hamilton’s entire pricing and digital infrastructure was moved under court control the week before Insignia’s sale to AIMCO at the request of HUD’s Inspector General. Many years later, when the court returned control of Hamilton’s inventory, many of the most valuable software tools were mysteriously missing.

Insignia was far from the only company cashing out during this period or the only interest threatened by illumination of government housing and mortgage data and government investment by place. During this time, numerous companies profiting from the large flow of government subsidies, financing and enforcement actions associated with poor people and poor communities, including private prison companies, were doing a brisk business. This was the early stage in the largest housing and mortgage market bubble in history combined with rising prices in the stock market. There were numerous companies and government agencies benefiting from a combination of insider information and the absence of transparency of government investment by place 1213

How many others who benefited from the destruction of Hamilton’s software tools and databases have financed Cuomo and his campaigns since he left HUD? This is another question about Andrew Cuomo that has yet to be answered. However, the subsequent decline in HUD finances while Cuomo was Secretary is well documented.

Missing Money

The federal fiscal year for 1999 started in October 1998, the month that AIMCO reported closing its purchase of Insignia and HUD engineered Ginnie Mae contracts to John Ervin, providing $800,000 in contract payments to Ervin over the next two years.

HUD failed to produce audited financial statements that year. Its opening balance from fiscal 1998 required undocumentable adjustments of $17 billion. To force the books to balance in 1999 required $59 billion in undocumentable adjustments. 14For its audit in 2000, Cuomo’s last year in office, HUD declined to make public the amount of undocumentable adjustments required to balance the books.15

HUD’s inability to produce audited financial statements in 1999 was attributed to HUDCAPS, a system installed and operated with the help of AMS, a contractor who had been paid $206 million since 1993. In contrast to Cuomo’s treatment of Hamilton, AMS was not fired, nor were payments due AMS withheld. Research to date shows no record of AMS or its employees being investigated as a result of the HUDCAPs failures and the extraordinary level of undocumentable adjustments to HUD’s books.

Not surprisingly, HUD’s rental assistance programs remained on the high-risk list maintained by the Congressional auditor, the General Accounting Office, which is now called the General Accountability Office (GAO).16

These events raise another disturbing question about Andrew Cuomo. Why did HUD finances melt down under Cuomo’s leadership and what, if anything, does that have to do with the billions flowing to large HUD landlords from the government and the stock market, and the millions now flowing back to Andrew Cuomo and his campaigns years later?

The Heart of the Matter

In 1997, members of my team working with HUD (now led by Cuomo) asked me to authorize Hamilton helping HUD to prepare its next budget using assumptions on the multifamily portfolio that were known to be false. For example, we were to presume that HUD’s apartment portfolio would not be impacted by welfare reform legislation that had been enacted the year before. As federal data indicated that high concentrations of tenants in privately-owned HUD-subsidized housing in large urban areas were getting federal welfare and/or food stamp subsidies, this made no sense. Our assessment was that the combined assumptions that HUD wished to use would make it easier for private owners to displace tenants in a way that would leave the tenants out in the cold without vouchers, while appropriations were preserved to fund project-based subsidies for HUD landlords.

At one point, the Hamilton team leader for our work with HUD came over to my house to try to persuade me that we should help HUD do this. He said that if we did not help HUD with the budget, he was concerned that we would be fired. We agreed that HUD was probably going to persuade the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that they could trust the budget, because Hamilton helped prepare it; hence, my concern that our involvement would be used to perpetuate a fraudulent budget. I asked him to define the value of our contract in terms of an acceptable level of children going homeless or dying. How many children should we help be forced to the streets so that we could keep our contract? Suddenly, he stopped and said something like, “Why am I doing this? So what if we lose our contract? We have better things to do in our life than be a party to murder.” To which I replied, “Now you have it.”

I tell this story to remind the reader that we have become a society where the most dangerous serial killers who stalk our land kill with a pen and not with a sword. The most important unanswered question about Andrew Cuomo’s time at HUD goes beyond how or why he and his agency engineered gains into Andrew Farkas, John Ervin and so many other private pockets. The more important question is how many people went without basic necessities because Cuomo diverted resources away from honest taxpayers and the people that HUD was created to serve. How many children in New York and around the country went homeless or worse because vouchers or job training were not available?

This is the most important unanswered question.

Attorney General of New York

Last month, while traveling outside of the US, I declined to read the materials on an investment, because the jurisdiction of the non-disclosure agreement that I was asked to sign was a state in the United States known for significant corruption in its enforcement and court system. In a highly competitive global market, why bother taking risk related to US corruption? The investment group understood completely and quickly delegated the agreement to a foreign entity, permitting me to sign under the jurisdiction of the country I was visiting. It is a country known for its lawfulness. They informed me that I was not the only person to make such a request.

It may sound like a little thing, until you realize the growing number of investors around the world who do not want to be exposed to the banana republic style corruption now perceived to be epidemic in the United States.

New York is the center of the financial markets in the United States. The health of these markets depends on investors’ faith in the integrity of their governance. The perception that the lead New York regulator is a politician who exploits the power of his or her office for personal ambition and finances will impact the flow and pricing of capital throughout the United States.

My recommendation, to both New Yorkers and members of the US financial and legal establishment concerned with America’s ability to attract capital in global markets, is that they ensure that the unanswered questions relating to Andrew Cuomo’s dealings with Andrew Farkas and Insignia and any other HUD-related special interests that have financed him and his campaigns be investigated and answered before Andrew Cuomo is permitted to hold public office again.

Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc. She is a former Managing Director and member of the board of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc, Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner under Bush I and President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc.

ENDNOTES

1 For background on Hamilton’s work for HUD, see Hamilton litigation archive at http://www.solari.com/gideon

2 See Rice's Loss Of HUD Job Is City Of Seattle's GainThe Seattle TimesDecember 21, 1996http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=2366139&date=19961221&query=Rice+%2B+HUD

13 See Where is the Collateral? Part I and IIBy Chris SandersSanders Research AssociatesOctober 28, 2003http://www.whereisthemoney.org/S00223_collateral.htm

As well as supporting material on 1998 Congressional hearings on Congressional Hearings in 1998 on CIA narcotics trafficking allegations:Congressional RecordMay 2, 1998Including Memorandum of Understanding explicitly exempting the requirement to report drug law violations by CIA non-employees to the Department of Justice http://www.solari.com/media/gideonMOU.html

Statement of Frederick P. Hitz, Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US House of Representatives, regarding investigation of allegations of connections between CIA and The Contras in drug trafficking to the United States, Volume I: The California Story, 16 March 1998http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/980316-ps.htm

14 See Statement of Susan Gaffney, Inspector General, Department of Housing and Urban Development, before the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and TechnologyMarch 22, 2000http://www.whereisthemoney.org/59billion.htm

15 See Kelly Patricia O’Meara’s ‘Missing Money’ Series on HUDhttp://www.solari.com/learn/articles_missingmoney.htm

16 See Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentBy the General Accounting Office (GAO)GAO/OCG-99-8(Single family and Rental Housing Assistance stay on GAO High Risk List)January 1, 1999http://www.gao.gov

The Myth of the Rule of LawBy Catherine Austin FittsSanders Research AssociatesNovember 2001http://www.solari.com/gideon/q301.pdf

$59 Billion Missing from HUD & Financial Control Problems

Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentBy the General Accounting Office (GAO)GAO/OCG-99-8(Single family and Rental Housing Assistance stay on GAO High Risk List)January 1, 1999http://www.gao.gov

Statement of Susan Gaffney, Inspector General, Department of Housing and Urban Development, before the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, March 22, 2000http://www.whereisthemoney.org/59billion.htm

Pearlie Rucker’s Eviction from HUD Housing in 1997:One Strike for the Poor and How Many for the Rest of Us?By Robert Hornstein, Treena Kaye,March 18, 2002Legal Timeshttp://www.mapinc.org/newscsdp/v02/n568/a03.html

May 2, 1998Including Memorandum of Understanding explicitly exempting the requirement to report drug law violations by CIA non-employees to the Department of Justice http://www.solari.com/media/gideonMOU.html

Statement of Frederick P. Hitz, Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US House of Representatives, regarding investigation of allegations of connections between CIA and The Contras in drug trafficking to the United States, Volume I: The California Story, 16 March 1998http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/980316-ps.htm

Chris Garvey:Ron Paul has said that when he objects to a bill as being unconstitutional, his fellow congressmen say, “Unconstitutional? Is that all you’ve got? Is that your only objection?”

Given this attitude of Congress toward the Constitution, is the supposed “Congressional interpretation of the Constitution” due any deference by the Supreme Court?

Justice Antonin Scalia: Yes, they are due deference. They represent the will of the people.Do I think that they care about the Constitution?Do I think that they even think about the Constitution?Not a whit.